Music and sex have had a long, sordid history together, but when it comes to dissecting gender politics in the world of electronic music, things tend to get a bit less fly. Which is exactly what Frankie Hutchinson and her two friends are working to dismantle. DISCWOMAN, a two-night music event being held in Bushwick\u2019s infamous Bossa Nova Civic Club, is the culmination of many\u00a0conversations, frustrations, and general exhaustion at the lack of dope female DJs getting their shine. The line-up features 12 of the borough\u2019s best female DJs playing back-to-back over two nights, starting Friday September 19 through Saturday September 20.<\/p>\n
NO TOFU\u00a0asked freelance journalist and all-around dope female Rula Al-Nasrawi to sit down with Frankie to discuss the event, the concept, and what it means to be a woman in yet-another male-dominated scene.<\/p>\n
Rula Al-Nasrawi: So tell me a little about DISCWOMAN, and how you came up with it and the idea behind it.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Frankie Hutchinson: It all kind of came together haphazardly. I was out with a friend of mine, Emma Burges-Olson, who\u2019s a DJ. And we kind of said at the same time, \u201cWe should do an all-woman DJ festival!\u201d and then it just grew into this whole thing\u2014this much bigger project. We approached Bossa Nova and they were really into it, and then it sort of went off from there. I enlisted one of my friends, Christine Tran, to help with the production. This was all a couple of months ago, I want to say June or July.<\/p>\n R: How many events have you guys actually had?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n F: We haven\u2019t had any events yet. It\u2019s just one big two-day event happening on Friday and Saturday.<\/p>\n R: Oh Whoops!<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n F: [laughs] It\u2019s a little confusing, because there are so many DJs that it seems like it\u2019s always been happening, but it\u2019s actually 12 DJs over the course of two nights.<\/p>\n R: Ok, ok\u2013<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n F: But it\u2019s weird because I feel like it\u2019s one of those things where it seems so familiar. It\u2019s something that should have always been there. [The idea] is so easy, it\u2019s like of course people are going to gravitate towards this.<\/p>\n R: Right, like how did this kind of event not exist before?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n F: Yeah, it\u2019s not like we have to put in that much work\u2014it\u2019s something that just creates itself and we just have to put our name on it, basically. The work is already there. The talent is already there. The interest is already there. Everything is there; it\u2019s just about branding it.<\/p>\n R: Well in terms of rounding up these women, you said you have, like what, 12 people?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n F: Right.<\/p>\n R: Would you want to make this a yearly event?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n F: Yes, definitely. We want to incorporate more women. I\u2019d want to add another day. We\u2019d probably have to move to a bigger venue\u2014so if the people who do bookings for Output are reading this: hi. we\u2019re interested. We just want to build the collective out and eventually end up with a record label, please and thank you.<\/p>\n R: What\u2019s the range? Are these women really successful DJs? Like is this a full-time thing for all of them?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n F: It depends. It\u2019s a very broad scale, actually. Our headliners like Lauren Flax and Shannon Funchess are full-time DJs. I couldn\u2019t really speak for everyone on the line-up, but I know that those two definitely play full-time. But also the way we curated the list is because Emma is a DJ, and it\u2019s kind of within our Bushwick community and the people whom we know. She drew up a list of women she knew, and wanted to really focus on talent that was very local to us, accessible to us. We weren\u2019t really striving to get a big name. We kind of just wanted a broad array of talent.<\/p>\n R: It\u2019s like what you were saying, that this event should have always been there, it doesn\u2019t really seem like a new thought or a new idea, but I don\u2019t know, personally I totally look at electronic music and the whole DJ culture being such a boys club still.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n F: Yeah totally, it\u2019s so true. It definitely is a boys club.<\/p>\n R: I just don\u2019t really understand what makes it such a guy thing?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n F: Obviously men want to take over everything, so here we go again. There\u2019s nothing particularly gendered about it\u2014I don\u2019t really get it.<\/p>\n R: Is music a good way for a woman to be transparent about her gender or identity? Or do you feel like it\u2019s almost more powerful that techno and EDM have no gender?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n F: Techno is genderless to me, but that doesn\u2019t mean its not trying to be co-opted by dudes, as per usual. One of my favorite techno DJs goes by the moniker Patricia, but is actually a dude, and when I found that out, it literally changed nothing. That\u2019s exactly how it should be.<\/p>\n R: It\u2019s like you\u2019re literally just standing up there with turntables, so why is this such a boys club? And there\u2019s such a huge list of female DJs in the mainstream and half of them I didn\u2019t even realize were female! And I wonder, for them, what is more empowering, being open about gender or not even talking about it?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n F: It is so hard to say. I\u2019m not sure to be honest. I think it\u2019s really up to the individual person. I understand if a woman doesn\u2019t want to always be talking about how she\u2019s a woman DJ or whatever, but I also respect a woman who wants her sex to be a part of her brand. It\u2019s a really individual thing.<\/p>\n R: Especially with mainstream electronic music specifically, everyone knows Diplo\u2019s a guy, everyone knows Dillon Francis is a guy, everyone knows Calvin Harris is a guy. So why would you have to be ambiguous as a woman? That almost seems anti-feminist in a way. For example, I had NO idea that Tokimonsta was a girl DJ until I looked her up.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n F: Wait, Cookie Monster?<\/p>\n R: [laughs] No, no! Tokimonsta!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n F: Oh god, that\u2019s tradge. Yeah, that sounds pretty masculine to me. If you\u2019re not a pop star or singer, it\u2019s easy to appear sort of neutral, I guess. But at the end of the day, it\u2019s just all of these EDM male DJs, and it\u2019s kind of crazy how many there are. But EDM is so much bigger than what we\u2019re doing, than the music we\u2019re playing. The community that we\u2019re a part of doesn\u2019t really engage with that. And I\u2019d say it\u2019s a lot more progressive in terms of gender than EDM is. There\u2019s definitely more female representation in our small techno community than there is in the larger EDM community, that\u2019s for sure. And it\u2019s all to do with profits, I guess. But the owner of Bossa Nova was telling me that sometimes places just don\u2019t want to book women DJs off the bat, and he\u2019s had to fight for certain women to be put on the roster.<\/p>\n R: But why?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n F: It\u2019s so absurd! I have no idea! I think there\u2019s also just this innate thing where people assume that women are incapable of doing some things. And even I catch myself thinking like that sometimes. It\u2019s so embedded in people. And it\u2019s funny when people are so impressed that women can DJ really well. It\u2019s obvious, but people always seem so surprised.<\/p>\n R: It\u2019s like the same idea as any other female performer. That concept has existed for years.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n F: There is something about it where they think it\u2019s too technical for women.<\/p>\n R: What does your DJ friend Emma think about it, has she had issues with getting work and all of that?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n F: She hasn\u2019t had really much trouble at all. She\u2019s a very confident woman and I think you have to be in order to survive. You have to have that personality type where you\u2019re more forthright, which is what she\u2019s like. If you\u2019re shy or whatever, I think there\u2019s definitely room for you to be taken advantage of. As much as she hasn\u2019t experienced any unfair treatment, she understands that it\u2019s definitely out there.<\/p>\n R: There is definitely a larger conversation around feminism in popular culture and in music that\u2019s happening right now. Do you think DISCWOMAN can fit into that discussion?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n F: Of course. We\u2019ve literally taken something so normalized in the history of technology: a discman and made it so it doesn\u2019t belong to men anymore. Literally can\u2019t wait for Sony to sue us: the gender battle I\u2019ve always dreamed of.<\/p>\n Rula Al-Nasrawi is a journalist whose work has appeared in The Atlantic, VICE, AlterNet and NPR.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Music and sex have had a long, sordid history together, but when it comes to dissecting gender politics in the world of electronic music, things tend to get a bit less fly. Which is exactly what Frankie Hutchinson and her two friends are working to dismantle. 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